The hardest substance known to man
is a Barbie high-heeled shoe
under my bare foot at 5 AM.
Time to rise & shine & greet the new day -
limping.
Cold, clear pre-dawn morning,
Christmas just a few days past,
its ghost still casts
a festive shadow over the living room -
as well as nearly a quarter of a million
pine needles.
Nevertheless,nevermind all that,
Monday calls.
God rest ye merry gentlemen,
but I’ve gotta go to work.
I make last minute rounds,
child’s room to child’s room,
inspecting their slumber.
My youngest daughter’s room
has obviously been ransacked by intruders.
I notice a disturbing naked Barbie doll orgy in the corner,
quick to chase the cat from the scene
before he can douse them with urine
like some perverted feline R Kelly.
Next, my teenage son hushes me,
“Do Not Disturb,”
glad to be home today, not school.
He always says,
“When will I EVER need to know this crap
they’re teaching me?!”
Though he did rather enjoy world geography the other day.
“Mom, didja know -
that in Thailand, not only is there ’Bangkok,’
but also a town called ’Poo-ket,’
but it’s spelled P-H-U-K-E-T . . .
You know, like . . . Fuck-It!”
Onto the middle child’s room,
she sleeps with the TV on,
CNN is blinking some tragedy.
Her room flickers full of dark reports
that I’ve no time for.
From this, I join the masses on the road,
10 minutes late where I work front desk
at a drug rehab,
such a happy place,
already one junkie on the couch,
I’m desperate for coffee,
feeling a cold comin’ on,
and someone says, “Good Morning.”
Have we really lowered our standards SO . . .
that THIS qualifies as a “good morning?”
But on the lobby TV a reporter says,
“...magnitude of 9.0.
The resulting tsunami devestated shores around the Indian Ocean.
Death count may reach more than a quarter of a million.
Whole villages washed out to sea”
No warning.
The tide ripped hand from hand
drowning child from screaming mother.
Some people lost EVERYONE they knew in the world
as the ocean stole it all without mercy.
Gave nothing back but corpses to sort through.
And when I think I’m having a “Bad Day,”
my house may be a wreck,
but it’s where I left it standing.
My children may cause me grief -
but I am not grieving for them.
I count my own “bad days” as blessings,
from dirty dish to pet stain to migraine.
And, in the town of Phuket, Thailand,
a 10-year-old girl saved over 100 tourists
because she’d learned in school the signs
that foretell a tsunami.
So, that, my son,
is when you’ll need to know
all that crap they’re teaching you.